HOLLYWOOD -- Norm's on La Cienega isn't The Palm or Mr. Chow or any number of other Tinseltown paparazzi traps, but it's period-perfect, on the eve of the third-season launch of "Mad Men," for lunch with displaced New Orleanian Bryan Batt.

Designed by the architects Armet & Davis, masters of the zany Sputnik-inspired branch of the mid-century-modern building movement, the 24/7 coffee shop is frozen in the same era inhabited by the characters on "Mad Men," the brilliant AMC drama returning at 9 tonight (August 16).

Even through two full seasons, the personal thaw has been very slow to come for Batt's character, Salvatore Romano, the Sterling Cooper ad agency art director and closeted gay but very married man.

Series creator and executive producer Matthew Weiner and his writing staff have ever-so-patiently revealed Romano's torment. A spurned advance from a professional colleague. A cigarette lighter borrowed from a crush-object co-worker. Wife Kitty's witnessing the obvious connection Sal makes with another man.

Sal is sublime, painfully so, a unique TV archetype: a man from a time when gay men married women to get along -- professionally, culturally and mostly miserably.

'MAD MEN'

• What: The third season premiere of the period drama series set in a 1960s New York ad agency.

• When: Tonight, 9 p.m., AMC

"I am representing people of a certain era in time, and I think we do have the responsibility of representing it honestly and truthfully," Batt said, over a Norm's Cobb salad. "It's what Matthew and the writers are doing. When people ask me, 'When is Sal coming out?' I say, 'To what? What is Sal coming out to in 1962 or 1963?' Nothing. There was no (gay) community at the time. People like to project current social acceptance into the past. It just doesn't apply.

"I do think (Sal) is an homage to the people who went through this and who really struggled. They had to fit in.

"You had to play the game. You had to try to find a way to fit in."

Complaining about Sal's slow acceptance of his true self is like complaining about all the smoking and drinking and littering and thoughtless misogyny that goes on in "Mad Men," which revolves around the smoking, drinking, littering, womanizing (but very married) mystery man Don Draper (Jon Hamm).

That was the way it was.

"I believe that he's living the way he wants to be living, and that he's trying to be 'normal,'$?" Weiner said of Sal, in a separate interview. "It's very clear what 'normal' is. There is a whole subculture there that he is sort of being pulled into, and the question is, 'How are you going to manage those two worlds?' Don is the best expert (at that) in the world."

As it happens, Don and Sal take a business trip together in the season premiere, which is packed with all of the elements -- sex, office intrigue, brilliant ad copy, smoking, drinking, etc. -- that has made "Mad Men" the coolest cult hit on television. The initial airing of last year's season finale drew just 1.7 million viewers, tiny in TV math, but the buzz about its return, especially among faithful viewers, is inescapable.

Early on in his time as Sal, Batt met with men who had lived his life.

"Actual ad men at the time, who were gay-but-closeted married men with children who lived the whole thing," Batt said. "I did get to talk to them and ask them, 'What was it like?' They said there were two options: Either play the game or commit suicide."

It's been a head-spinning couple of years since Batt, who launched to Broadway from the New Orleans theater scene, landed Sal.

He did so by auditioning for Weiner and pilot director Alan Taylor, working with just a few pages of script. The character description in those pages made it clear who Sal is.

"He's obviously gay to a modern audience," said Batt, recalling the approximate wording. "In the world of 1960, nobody knows.

"I just played it as straight as possible."

Later, both Weiner and Taylor told Batt he'd nailed the part at that first-and-only audition.

"The hard thing is when Matt says, 'Throw it away,'$?" meaning "Underplay it," Batt said. "Sal's an artist. There's an aloofness to him. That's his cover. He can be a little expressive, and hold his cigarette a little arched."

It's not surprising, given the show's critical acceptance and outstanding drama Emmy Award, but Sal has been opening doors for Batt.

He shot a guest role for an upcoming episode of CBS' "Ghost Whisperer" last week, and has a small part in the Judd Apatow-Adam Sandler summer flick, "Funny People."

"People remember the last thing you did, or what you're known for," Batt said. "I've done a lot of musicals, so people think I'm just a musical-theater performer. I did a lot of cabaret shows, so people say, 'Oh, no -- a cabaret performer!' I keep fighting to say, 'No, I'm just an actor. I can become what you need me to become.'

"I actually had a casting director in New York say, 'Who would've thought -- you in a drama series.' I can be funny. I've done a lot of comedy, so you would've thought that if I'd do any kind of TV it would be comedic. You never know."

Batt plays Sandler's character's manager in "Funny People," though most of the performance was cut.

"One scene remains," Batt said. "I had a huge scene with Adam Sandler. We filmed it maybe once as scripted, and then hours of improvisation. Judd threw out all these lines and suggestions and we would just run with it. We were just cracking up the people on the set."

If Apatow runs to form, the cut scenes will appear online or on the DVD.

"(Apatow) asked for me to audition and that was that," Batt said. "It was really fun, and completely different from 'Mad Men.' A totally different vibe.

"(Apatow) couldn't be nicer, and Adam Sandler was a lovely man.

"I enjoyed it. It was a departure."

Sal was a departure as well, at least from Batt's previous professional credits list. He'd undertaken dramatic roles in the past on stage and in film (1995's "Jeffrey," opposite Patrick Stewart), but the audition for Weiner's cable drama changed his life, professionally and personally.

"It's so wonderful to be taken seriously as a dramatic actor," Batt said.

Between "Mad Men" shooting seasons in Los Angeles, Batt continues to run the Magazine Street home boutique Hazelnut he opened with his partner, Tom Cianfichi, several years ago. (A story in last week's National Enquirer spotlighted Batt's life in New Orleans. The headline: "$?'MAD MEN' star mans the store.")

"People come in the store now looking for me," Batt said. "They come in with cameras and want pictures and autographs."

L.A. is "a completely different beast," Batt added. "After living in New York for so many years, and also having that tie to New Orleans, I know those cities like the back of my hand. This is so spread out. It's a totally different lifestyle than both of those cities. I'm getting used to it.

"(On) a Broadway schedule, you know what your schedule is day in and day out and you can set up your life accordingly. Here, I don't know my call until really the day before.

"It changes constantly. I try to go to the gym and go on the elliptical and do some weights and stay in shape. A lot of the time I find myself going back to New Orleans if I have a little stretch of time to check on my mom and check on the business."

Batt is also employing his down time doing some writing of his own. He has a deal with Random House imprints for two different books -- one about design, linked to the success of Hazelnut, one a memoir of growing up in New Orleans.

The memoir, begun years ago, is "basically just stories that I think are hysterical," Batt said. "I showed it to a book agent who said, 'I don't know what to do with this.' Then 'Mad Men' hit and he said, 'I think I know what to do with this.' Basically it's about my relationship with my mother, tongue-in-cheek but very loving."

And like everybody else involved with "Mad Men" -- on both sides of the screen -- Batt awaits each new script to see what the show's writers come up with for Sal and his Sterling Cooper colleagues.

With just a handful of episodes left to shoot in this season -- but the promise of seasons to come -- the near-term fates of the "Mad Men" characters are far from resolved.

Batt said he and the other actors only infrequently discuss longer story arcs with Weiner and the writers.

"Usually at the beginning of the season, then it changes completely," Batt said. "Things I thought were going to happen to Sal are completely the opposite of what happens as the season progresses.

"$?'Mad Men' is shocking, it's heartbreaking, it's not what you expect to happen but could happen.

"I think we're headed to a great season finale. I think it's really going to be interesting, but I don't know what it is and no one does.